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Spring 2004

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The Brothers Mahoney: Family Chemistry Breeds Success

–Faye Wolfe

FIFTY YEARS AGO, THERE WERE three brothers growing up in Springfield, Mass. Those who cared about them weren’t going to leave their futures to chance: Their father wanted them to have a trade. The high school nuns kept asking, “What are you going to do with your lives?” So, beginning with the oldest, Bill Mahoney ’55, each traveled up the road to the University of Massachusetts Amherst and became chemistry majors.

“UMass Amherst had a good program and was within financial reach,” Bill explains. Dick ’55 followed Bill, telling the nuns he’d be a doctor; chemistry would be the stepping-off point. By the time Bob ’70 arrived at UMass Amherst his brothers were well launched in their careers. “Their jackets matched their pants and they were driving late-model cars,” Bob recalls. To the teenager and his parents a chemistry degree seemed a sure ticket to success.

Dick eventually became Chairman and CEO of Monsanto Company. Now retired from the multinational life-sciences corporation, he is the Distinguished Executive in Residence at the Weidenbaum Center on the Economy, Government and Public Policy at Washington University at St Louis. Not bad for someone who claims he was “a singularly undistinguished student.” By the time he retired in 1997, Bill, who also says he was no standout in the chemistry lab, was Vice Chairman, Chief Operating Officer and Chairman of the Executive Committee of the Board of Directors of Witco Corporation (now Crompton Corporation). A Fortune 500 specialty chemicals and petroleum products company, “Witco manufactures products that make other products better,” explains Bill. Bob strayed furthest from science—he is currently Vice Chairman of Citizens Financial Group, Inc., one of New England’s largest banks.

The brothers are unanimous in believing that UMass Amherst helped them make it to the top. Bill says simply, “Without that education, we would never have achieved what we did.” Bob agrees. “For our family, it was not just our first choice, it was our only choice, our only chance at a top-flight research university experience,” he says.

The Mahoneys have fond memories of their undergraduate years. “People were thrilled to be there,” says Dick. Many students were like the Mahoneys—the first in their families to go to a four-year college. There was a general seriousness of purpose, they say, and fun was simpler—it was a big deal to go to town to the movie theater. Less fun than an evening at the Drake or Barselotti’s, perhaps, were those Saturday morning lab classes, which started at 8 a.m.

Bob, too, vividly recalls his six “eights” during his four years. “I never worked as hard in my life,” he says. Getting his MBA (“I graduated UMass Amherst on Saturday and started at Columbia Business School on Monday,” he says) was, by comparison, a walk in the park. “The professors were excellent,” Bill remembers. In particular he credits his chemistry training with giving him “the discipline to analyze situations—business or scientific.” He confesses cheerfully, “I wasn’t first in chemistry class, but I did well socially.” Then he brings up what seems to be a family joke, saying that Professor George Richardson, whom all three brothers had for chemistry, struggled years later to describe Dick’s performance as a chemistry student. Richardson finally mustered: “He kept a neat lab bench.” Unprompted, Dick also volunteers this story, although he notes that Dr. Richardson denied ever having said it.

A BREAKTHROUGH

The Mahoneys’ enthusiasm for UMass Amherst shows in their generous support. The family recently pledged $2 million toward the construction of the Integrated Sciences Building. As well, Bob has been a UMass Trustee for six years, and is a member of the Board of Directors of the UMass Amherst Foundation. Bill is the past Chair of the College of Natural Sciences and Mathematics Advisory Council. And for the last five years Bill has taught a course, “The Business of Science, Contemporary Industrial Practices,” on the Amherst campus. “It’s probably the most rewarding thing I’ve done in retirement,” says Bill.

The inspiration for the Integrated Sciences Building came during a visit to UMass Amherst a few years ago. Following a speech the three brothers gave to the chemistry department, Bob recalls, they were “kibbitzing” with Linda Slakey, then Dean of the School of Natural Sciences and Mathematics, Lila Gierasch, and several other professors. The Mahoneys’ collective impression that scientists on campus in various fields—botany, chemistry, zoology—“didn’t talk to one another,” according to Bob, bothered them.

As Dick explains, “I’m interested in the nexus between chemistry and biology. Within industry, the lines between the two fields have blurred in the last couple of decades—there’s a lot of crossover in such areas as agriculture, pharmaceuticals, food, nutrition.” But getting academic disciplines to join forces is another matter. The idea of a building that would foment dialogue and collaboration seemed a natural, if ambitious, solution. “A breakthrough,” Bob terms the campus’ effort to encourage that interdisciplinary cooperation.

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